Across all aspects of life in today’s increasingly complex and interdependent world, the need for large amounts of data to be moved from anywhere, to anywhere, on demand, is vast, immediate, and growing.

This demand is driven not only by social and commercial requirements, like the sharing and improvement of educational, medical, and business information, but also, and perhaps most critically, by military applications. However, the expansion of high data transfer rate capacity is hampered by a critical lack of required infrastructure, especially in less developed areas of the world.

This trend is now changing toward a space-based network with the capacity to service the entire globe. In this report, the key metric for the communications market is the assured, reliable, high-capacity data transfer rates (DTR), on demand, for the end user. This report presents a summary and assessment of both the current terrestrial and space-based communication networks, the projected evolutionary paths over the next decade, and the implications of both technical and political influence on the global market for high, on demand, and secure data rates.

Image is courtesy of NASA.

The study provides the reader with an understanding of what can be achieved within the next decade if both the political and commercial will, and economic incentives, are present to connect the entire globe. Furthermore, a qualitative description of several ‘disruptive’ platform technologies will provide the reader an appreciation and qualitative understanding of how even developing countries can be connected to the global communication grid.

While the ground and launch segments of the space industry are key for overall success of space operational capabilities, this paper focuses primarily on the space segment of the industry and how that relates to the industry as a whole.